Teenagers without English skills face highest high school hurdles of all

Every year, thousands of immigrants enroll in Minnesota public schools, but the challenges aren’t equal for all of them. As a group, the hurdles are highest for those who enter the system in high school with little or no English language and writing skills.

“It’s slow going when you start that stuff at 16, 18,” said SandraHall, who co-founded St. Paul’s LEAP High School, which serves recent immigrants who face exactly those challenges. “They may actually, in some things, go faster than little kids. “But how much time have they got?”

Getting older new immigrants to graduate is “almost impossible,” she said, even if they stay until they age out. At LEAP, which stands for Limited English Achievement Program, about 60 percent of students have never attended school and most are 18-21 years old.

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Every Hand Joined is a Sustaining Network Member of the StriveTogether network. This national organization works with communities nationwide to help create a civic infrastructure that unites stakeholders around a shared vision of the future and a common set of goals and measurements of success for every child, cradle to career.